Saturday, October 15, 2005

Lots of MSM are all worked up over President Bush's people going over some procedures with those soldiers who talked to the President from Iraq.

No one says the President's people tried to plant questions or used props. But MSM still doesn't like what happened.

Funny, none of MSM was worked up when a reporter planted a question about body armor with a soldier who was taking part in a televised event with Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.

The President's people didn't do anything so deceiving as write out a question and plant it with a soldier, and then report on the soldier's question without mentioning the reporter had set it all up.

And it's funny how NBC, which is one of the MSM outfits most worked up about what the President's people did, is the very same outfit that had a reporter paddling in a canoe as she reported for NBC's Today show's viewers the flooding in New Jersey.

It all seemed pretty dramatic reporting until a couple of guys innocently walked in front of the reporter, and we could all see the water was only a few inches deep.

Too bad for NBC its "reporting" was live so they couldn't just clip the two guys out of the "flood report."

At Betsy's Page she has a link to the video tape of it all. As Betsy says, "too funny."

If anyone knows those guys tell them thanks from those of us who want a more honest MSM.

Things got hot when Melanie came to believe that at a conference she did not attend Rosen said something like: Journalists are "used to being the filter from God, but people don't accept that anymore."

Now, you and I would hear something like that and say,"Sure, Rosen means we won't accept Rather and CBS telling us their anonymous source is "unimpeachable" when he's a long-time Bush hater; and we won't accept stuff like The N&O's front page headline the other day about that alleged spy being an "Ex-Cheney aide" when the guy first went to work in the White House for Vice-president Gore, and worked for him for 19 months."

But that's us, folks.

Melanie responded with:

Heavens. Perhaps Rosen has spent too much time peering at journalism through the lens of his computer screen. He ought to take a tour through some of the material in the latest American Journalism Review, which reports on how journalists covered Hurricane Katrina.... He ought to be out with a reporter trying to get a reluctant local sheriff ...

Comment from: Melanie Sill [Visitor] • http://blogs.newsobserver.com 10/13/05 at 16:34Thanks for the comments and trackbacks. I'm still out of the office but have some thoughts to add in a new post when I return. Jay (that’s Rosen –ed.), thanks for taking time to expand upon the filter metaphor. Rather than debating it, I would like to set forth briefly an alternate idea on how N&O editors frame our choices each day and our overall mission. I do appreciate the discussion.

Remember Melanie had run that foot-stamping column about public officials not responding when the N&O came round. She really lit out after Governor Easley and his staff. She didn’t like an email one of the Governor’s staffers had sent her. She filtered the email, as journlaists say, and gave us readers a summary of its contents. It sure sounded bad.

But what Melanie was telling us didn’t sound at all like Governor Easley or his staffers.

Thanks to the Governor's office, we were all able to see and read for ourselves what the staffer had actually sent Melanie. And the email wasn’t much like what Melanie had said it was, was it?

So I put four questions together for Melanie including why she hadn't made the email available to us in the first place and whether the way she represented to readers what the staffer had written was typical of how N&O reporters and editors report what public officials and their staffs say.

It's all in the post: A link to Melenie's column, a copy of the email, and the questions.

We never heard another word from Melanie about any of it, did we?

Now we’re going to be given “an alternative idea.”

Melanie, how about first answering the questions we asked about how you could report to us on that email the way you did? The offer to publish in full your answers at www.johnincarolina.com still stands. And I’ll bet other bloggers will be happy to do the same at their blogs, just as they were the last time.

If the problem is publishing at blogs, OK, no hard feelings. But then why not publish in The N&O print edition your column and the email? N&O readers would be very interested to read it all.

Folks, I’m emailing this post to Melanie. In a few minutes, I’ll also give her a link at her blog.

Craig has lots of mentions of restaurants with special seafood dishes. Does you mouth water when you hear a place serves "Bang-bang shrimp?"

Craig links to what he says is a great new blog where you can learn the location of Raleigh's "dining epicenter."

My only criticism of Craig's post is that he's once again failed to say anything about Raleigh's widely-sold News & Observer baloney. Is the Sunday edition the best? Or does The N&O have to turn out so much balony for what's their busiest day of the week that we'd be better off trying it on a weekday when the staff can be closer attention to what their serving us? We need answers.

So how about it, Craig? Will you try The N&O for a few nights and tell us what you think? If you can't get out, The N&O does home delivery the same as Dominoes.

Does anyone know if Bill Buckley has said anything public regarding the Supreme Court nomination of White House Counsel Harriet Miers?

I news.googled "Buckley Miers" and got nothing that could be attributed to Buckley.

If anyone has information, please comment. Include a link if possible.

Thank you.____________________________________

Update:

Thanks to N. C. State University Professor and blogger Craig Newmark we have something Buckley said about the Miers nomination. It's from his Oct. 4 column. Typical Buckley, he's thoughtful and informed but I wouldn't call what he said a full out endorsement. That's mainly because he was speaking the day after the President announced her nomination. I don't know what Buckley would say today, ten days later.

I am a big supporter of intellectual and political balance at my law school, UNC. It's no secret, I think, that the faculty as a whole at this law school are, in their own lives, rather to the left of center; I am too, but probably a good bit closer to the center than most of my colleagues.

I don’t have anything concerning faculty political affiliation at NC’s other law schools – Campbell, Central, Duke and Wake Forest. If you have something you can add, please comment.

I’m going to email this post to Professor Muller and invite him to comment on the study and/or the current status of political alignment among faculty at UNC-CH Law.

In recent years, Pinter's lavished praise on his now fellow Nobel laureate, Yasser Arafat and "his cause." It's never bothered Pinter that Arafat lured and trained children to turn themselves into human bombs; and then sent them out to explode themselves beside innocents, including other children at play or school.

It's never bothered Pinter that during decades of encouraging and directing terrorism, Arafat grew wealthy through graft while most Palestinian people live in poverty.

I'm sure you'll be having a nice little tea party with your fellow war criminal, Tony Blair. Please wash the cucumber sandwiches down with a glass of blood, with my compliments.

Harold Pinter Playwright

Pinter's letter is the kind of writing that excites the far-Left and the Nobel selection committee.

Pinter is in the tradition of another Nobel literature prize winner, Pablo Neruda.

By 1953 when Stalin died, everyone knew he had killed tens of millions of innocent people. But he remained a revered figure on the far-Left.

A grieving Neruda penned a tribute to Stalin. Here's part of it:

To be men! That is the Stalinist law! . . . We must learn from Stalin his sincere intensity his concrete clarity. . . . Stalin is the noon, the maturity of man and the peoples. Stalinists, Let us bear this title with pride. . . .

Neruda's Nobel was awarded in 1971.

I was tempted to end this post with something like: "Whose next for a Nobel, Michael Moore?"

But that wouldn't be fair to Moore, although I don't doubt there are some on the Nobel selection committee who think he shows promise.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Michelle Malkin and William at Florida Masochist have informative and moving remembrance posts marking today's fifth anniversary of the U.S.S. Cole attack which killed 17 of our sailors and wounded dozens more. Both blogs have photos.

President Bush said Wednesday his advisers were telling conservatives about Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers' religious beliefs because they are interested in her background and "part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion." "People are interested to know why I picked Harriet Miers," Bush told reporters at the White House. "They want to know Harriet Miers' background. They want to know as much as they possibly can before they form opinions. And part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion."

Hard to believe only a few months ago White House staffers were telling everyone then Judge Roberts's religion shouldn't be considered in determining his suitability to serve on the Supreme Court.

The White House was right then just as it's wrong now.

What the White House is doing flies in the face of the Constitution's ban on a religious test for office.

Most conservatives won't support what the White House is doing, but they'll be tarred by the Dems and MSM with the "religious zealots" label.

The White House is using a repugnant and dumb tactic born of desperation. It can only hurt the President, his political allies, and America's constitutional fabric.

Please contact the White House. Remind people there that when a ship's been hit by a torpedo, the emergency response pumps are for getting water off the ship, not bringing more on board.

Syria's interior minister, who ran Lebanon for many years and was one of several top officials caught up in the U.N. probe of the slaying of that nation's former prime minister, died Wednesday. The country's official news agency said he committed suicide in his office.

The death of Brig. Gen. Ghazi Kenaan — just days before the final U.N. investigation report is due — was a new and startling sign of turmoil in Syria, whose authoritarian regime is girding for the chance that the U.N. report might implicate high-ranking officials in the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri. He was killed by a bomb in February as his convoy drove through Beirut.

"They're saying a woman who was one of the first to head up a major law firm with over 400 lawyers doesn't have intellectual heft," Mikulski said. "I find this a double standard."

The AP gives us more, of course, but let's stop here.

It's true there's been some unfair criticism of Miers by conservatives, but most of what's been said is within the bounds of reasonableness; and certainly nothing like what many Democratic leaders and their media follows have often done to President Bush's judicial nominees.

For instance, has a single Republican Senator or prominent conservative academic, journalist or blogger called Miers “a wacko?”

For years, the federal courts served as the shield protecting basic civil rights in this country. This administration wants the courts to become the sword that destroys those rights. And don't think this stops with Judge Pickering. He's just the tip of the iceberg.

Post Roberts, we know Schumer is a lightweight. But Schumer deserves credit for this: He sure can trash.

And there were all those Democrats cheering when Ted Kennedy, "the liberal lion," roared "Neanderthals" at a group of men and women who had agreed to serve on the federal bench. The ABA found every one of them either Qualified or Well Qualified, didn't it?

Mikulski is right about one thing. Harriet Miers has been the target of some incredibly sexist remarks. Here are a few of them:

"I hope President Bush doesn't have any more office wives tucked away in the White House."

"(Miers) is one of the women who steadfastly devote their entire lives to doting on (Bush), like the vestal virgins guarding the sacred fire."

"(She's) a bachelorette who was known for working long hours.'"

In her denunciation of Miers's “incredibly sexist" critics, Mikulski didn't mention any of the sexist remarks cited here.

Why not? I think because all of them appeared on the editorial page of The New York Times, a paper as passionately Democratic as Mikulski herself.

(Vaden) quotes media critic Jay Rosen (as) saying journalists are "used to being the filter from God, but people don't accept that anymore."

Heavens. Perhaps Rosen has spent too much time peering at journalism through the lens of his computer screen. He ought to take a tour through some of the material in the latest American Journalism Review, which reports on how journalists covered Hurricane Katrina -- including blogs and online journalism. He ought to be out with a reporter trying to get a reluctant local sheriff to share a report that is public information but that the sheriff controls. Rosen ought to be out driving toward a disaster zone, instead of away from one, trying to find out what happened and why. He ought to be at the tail end of a 12-hour day with an assistant city editor at any newspaper, editing stories on deadline and trying to make them clear and cogent.

Huh? You have taken a comment that was offered in a specific context--the act of filtering, and the kind of knowledge that lies behind the act--and fuzzed it up it so that I appear to be expressing some type of general disrespect to working reporters. All so you can turn in a cliche about ivory towerism.

Rosen ended with:

You got it wrong, Melanie.

In between, Rosen provided a point-by-point response to Melanie.

There are lots of excellent comments besides Rosen’s, including ones from bloggers Bob Owens and David Boyd.

My favorite comment to date is this one from Visitor Jim:

Melanie -- Too funny. You are editorialzing about the scrupulous newsgathering skills of local newspapers by commenting on a second-hand quote you never bothered to verify with the actual speaker, but nonetheless use as a basis for making juvenile accusations about getting a life beyond the computer. You have made your point, albeit not the one you intended. Hysterical.

Also, visit the blog of Ed Cone, Greensboro News & Record editor. who actually heard Rosen’s remarks. Scroll down to his posts for October 11. Read the one that begins: “You got it wrong, Melanie.” It's very brief and very interesting.

Update: David Boyd just informed me Ed Cone is not an editor at the Greensboro N&R. Ed's bio at his blog says he's an opinion columnist for the paper. Sorry for the error, Ed and readers. And thanks for the heads up, David.

(Folks, I just sent the following email to The N&O's front page editor with a copy to its public editor. I'll keep you posted. JinC)

To: Eric Frederick Front Page Editor Raleigh News & Observer

From: John Blogger www.johnincarolina.com

Re: The N&O's identification of a source

Dear Eric:

Your Oct 9 front page includes the headline, Miers defined by loyalty to Bush, after which a story begins:

In an administration filled with ideological warriors, Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers has been a quiet foot soldier whose only mission is service to the president.

That opinion sentence frames the theme of the entire story/essay.

Because of time constraints, I'll pass over the theme and get to your identification of a source, David Frum, who endorses your theme.

"She was a loyal assistant,” said former White House speechwriter David Frum. “She’s not an initiator. She was never a force for anything…. She reflects the president’s philosophy.” (Ellipse in original. – JinC)

As you know, David Frum was one of the first and sharpest critics of Miers’ nomination. In recent days, his blog here has been devoted almost entirely to fighting her nomination.

I would have thought that under The N&O’s Fairness and Accuracy policy readers would have been told of Frum’s opposition to the Miers nomination.

Why did you decide not to tell readers about it?

I look forward to your reply, which I will publish in full at JinC.

I’m copying to Public Editor Ted Vaden because he has written on the issue of proper source identification.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

(Welcome, After reading this post, please take a look at another post that describes how a major MSM paper took a story about possible spying in the White House, and turned it into a liberal spin "hit-Cheney" piece. It's here. JinC)

With respected conservative voices asking that her nomination be withdrawn and friends at her Texas church praising her readiness “to always help serve the coffee,” you may have wondered if things could get any worse for Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers.

Well, they just did.

Today's New York Times reports Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Arlen Specter (R- Penn.) says it’s become “more emphatic” in his mind the Miers needs “to bone up on constitutional law.”

Ouch.

And there’s more. The same Times story reports former Republican Senator Dan Coats, picked by the White House to help shepherd Miers’ nomination through the Senate, had this to say during a CNN interview:

"If great intellectual powerhouse is a qualification to be a member of the court and represent the American people and the wishes of the American people and to interpret the Constitution, then I think we have a court so skewed on the intellectual side that we may not be getting representation of America as a whole."

Double ouch.

The Times then adds:

Mr. Specter, asked about (Coats) remark, laughed and wondered if it was "another Hruska quote" - a reference to an oft-quoted comment by the late Roman Hruska, a Republican senator from Nebraska, who defended G. Harrold Carswell, a Supreme Court nominee who was rejected by the Senate. "Even if he is mediocre," Mr. Hruska said, "there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance?"

If Senators Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy read The Times this morning, they’ll probably decide to take a few more days off and just let Specter and Coats continue digging.

You can survive attacks from political foes. But when the people you’re counting on to be your strong supporters are providing material comedy writers will use for jokes ridiculing you, your days are numbered.